Infrared imagery of a scene can be used to provide information not obtainable from visible light imagery, such as temperature information not discernible in visible light imagery.
However, infrared imaging systems frequently operate at lower levels of spatial image resolution to that provided by visible light imaging systems.
To provide a more informative image, infrared and visible light images can be overlaid in order to obtain a resultant combined image. The visible light imagery content can be used to provide clearly recognizable details relating to objects within the scene, and the infrared imagery content can be used to provide further information, such as for example temperature information relating to these objects.
However a problem may be caused because the visible light and infrared (IR) cameras are located at different spatial positions when viewing the scene. As a result the visible and IR cameras will see objects in the scene from different angular positions. This can lead to parallax effects which may cause problems.
Furthermore, the imaged scene can contain a total number of objects with a wide range of temperatures, while an object or objects of interest within the imaged scene may have temperatures that extend over a smaller temperature range. Within the combined visible light and infrared image, or indeed within an infrared image, the effectively displayable contrast across the object or objects of interest is reduced because the displayable contrast range of the infrared display must extend over the entire temperature range of the total number of objects within the imaged scene.
There is furthermore a need to extract as much information from combined visible light and infrared images of a scene, which can be difficult using existing imaging systems where spatial information within the scene may not be discernible or be lacking within captured images.
It is an aim of the present invention to solve these problems.